One Last Gingerbread

It snowed again. I couldn't believe that one. I had to go digging in the back of the coat closet to find my Sorrel boots and ski gloves so that I could go outside and shovel. I swear to God I've shoveled enough snow this winter to cover a small state, like Rhode Island or West Virginia. So you can imagine my frustrated surprise and smoldering anger as I banged around the basement trying to remember where I had put the snow shovels. Of course I've already planted the peas and fava beans, which should both be fine. But the patch of spring mesclun mix that's just beginning to germinate-is that going to make it? I'm about to fly into a gardener's rage. Are gardeners supposed to fly into rages? I'll wind up in gardener's anger management:

"My name is Michael and I began yelling at the garden in 2011. No, wait–it was 2010 with the Japanese garden beetles and the cut-worms. Or was it 2009 and the lead-contamination in the soil?" Then an elderly lady in a wide-brimmed straw hat and canvas tool-apron leans over and gives me a long, firm hug of support.

If it's going to keep snowing then I'm making gingerbread and that's all there is to it. I've got all these apples left over from a photo shoot, so it's going to be an apple-ginger bread. Try and stop me.



Apple-Ginger Bread
adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 pounds (about 4) apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter @ room temperature
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon micro-planed fresh ginger
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup molasses
4 large eggs

In a medium saucepan, combine the 1/3 cup sugar, lemon juice and apple chunks and cook over medium heat until the apples break down (5-10 minutes). Cover and continue to cook another 5 to 10 minutes until the whole thing looks like applesauce. Let cool.

Preheat the oven to 350˚

Butter 2 loaf pans and line with parchment paper.

Into a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and all the dry spices.

Into a small bowl, combine the milk, vanilla.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, 1 3/4 cups sugar, molasses and fresh ginger on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides as needed. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition.

With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the milk mixture; beat until just combined after each addition, being careful not to overmix. Add the applesauce and mix to combine again.

Divide the batter between the two loaf pans and bake until a skewer or cake tester comes out clean - approximately 45 minutes to an hour. Cool on a wire rack for 20 minutes and then run a knife around the edges and invert the pans to release the loafs. Let the loafs cool completely before slicing (if you can wait).

Bitter Marmalade and English Tea

I worked for a Scottish photographer in New York many years ago who summarized the difference between the Americans and the English with the simple observations that Americans had better teeth but the English made a better cup of tea. He attributed the former to better health care and the latter, I think, to superior character. Anthony Burgess puts it more bluntly: "The Americans, just like the French, do not know how to make tea." In all the time that I worked at this photographer's studio there was nothing in the manner or technique of his preparation that spoke of some mystical art or tea freemasonry – hot water from an electric kettle and a standard-issue bag of one's tea of choice dunked into a Crate-and-Barrel mug. Was I missing something? I always chose Earl Grey which he pronounced with wry, mocking authority to be for "old ladies." And then there's milk and sugar. Did the English use milk but the Chinese didn't? Or was it the other way around? Did anybody use sugar or was that the sure sign of a rube? I despaired of ever being able to make a proper cup of tea.

But I've been on a bit of a marmalade-making binge lately. So sooner or later you find yourself hankering for a cup of tea. And not just any tea – English tea. "But what is English tea?", I ask myself. What makes it English? They certainly don't grow any tea in England. English Breakfast Tea?

As it turns out, English tea is fermented black tea from India (or Ceylan.) Back in the good old days, when the sun never set on the British Empire, they tried a number of tactics to get the Chinese to supply their growing appetite for tea – coercion, infiltration, addiction and finally armed conflict. In the end they decided to eliminate the middle-man and just plant tea in India instead. They owned it after all. The stronger, darker tea went well with sweeter foods and its bitterness could stand a little "milk and sugar", as opposed to the lighter more elegant green teas drunk in China and Japan.

Whichever way you look at it, it goes great with marmalade.






Orange Campari Marmalade
adapted from The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook

I've been enjoying a Campari and soda in the evenings lately – always with a slice of orange. The bitter and the slightly sweet really hits a spot deep in my Italian soul. So once I started thinking about making Rachel's Bitter Orange & Cinnamon Marmalade I couldn't get the idea of adding Campari out of my head. Luckily she has a lemon marmalade recipe that uses limoncello which I took as her blessing. I substituted cardamom for the cinnamon because I'll add it to anything I can reasonably get away with. I can honestly say this is the best damn marmalade I've ever had in my life - hats off to Rachel Saunders. Special thanks to the folks at Blue Chair for letting me reprint this recipe almost verbatim.

1 1/4 pounds Seville oranges, cut into eighths
3/4 pound lemons (preferably Lisbon), cut into eighths
2 3/4 pounds seeded Seville or other sour oranges, halved crosswise
each half cut lengthwise into quarters and sliced thinly crosswise
4 pounds white cane sugar
3 to 4 extra Seville oranges, to make 6 ounces strained freshly squeezed juice
1/4 cup Campari
1 1/2 tablespoons green cardamom pods, crushed lightly in a mortar to release their seeds

Makes approximately twelve 8-ounce jars

Day 1
Prepare the cooked citrus juice: Place the orange and lemon eighths in a large nonreactive saucepan. Add enough water to cover the fruit by 1 inch. Bring the fruit to a boil over high heat, then decrease the heat to medium. Cook at a lively simmer, covered, for 3 hours, or until the fruit is very soft and the liquid has become slightly syrupy. As the oranges and lemons cook, press down on them gently with a spoon every 30 minutes or so, adding a little more water if necessary. The water level should stay consistently high enough for the fruit to remain submerged as it cooks.

When the oranges and lemons are finished cooking, strain their juice by pouring the hot fruit and liquid into a medium strainer or colander suspended over a heatproof storage container or nonreactive saucepan. Cover the entire setup well with plastic wrap and let drip overnight at room temperature.

Meanwhile, prepare the thinly sliced oranges. Place the slices in a wide stainless-steel kettle and cover amply with cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat, then decrease the heat and cook at a lively simmer for 5 minutes. Drain, discarding the liquid. Return the orange slices to the kettle and cover with 1 inch of cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat, then decrease the heat to medium and cook, covered, at a lively simmer for 2 hours, or until the fruit is very tender. As the fruit cooks, stir it gently every 30 minutes or so, adding a little water if necessary. The water level should stay high enough for the fruit to remain submerged as it cooks. Remove the pan from the heat, cover tightly, and let rest overnight at room temperature.

Day 2
Place a saucer with five metal teaspoons in a flat place in your freezer for testing the marmalade later.

Place your perfectly clean jars and lids on a baking sheet and put into a 250˚ oven to sterilize while you finish the marmalade.

Remove the plastic wrap from the orange and lemon eighths and their juice and discard the fruit. Strain the juice well enough through very fine-mesh strainer to remove any lingering solids.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the sugar, cooked citrus juice, fresh orange juice, the Campari, and the orange slices and their liquid, stirring well. Transfer the mixture to an 11- or 12-quart copper preserving pan or wide nonreactive kettle. Place the cardamom into a fine-mesh stainless-steel tea infuser with a firm latch and add to the mixture, pressing down on it to be sure it is submerged.

Bring the mixture to boil over high heat. Cook at a rapid boil over high heat until the setting point is reached; this will take a minimum of 20 minutes, but may take longer depending on your individual stove and pan. Initially, the mixture will bubble gently for several minutes; then, as more moisture cooks out of it and its sugar concentration increases, it will start to foam. Do not stir it at all during the initial bubbling; then, once it starts to foam, stir it gently every few minutes with a heatproof rubber spatula. As it gets close to being done, stir it slowly every minute or two to prevent burning, decreasing the heat a tiny bit if necessary. The marmalade is ready for testing when its color darkens and its bubbles become very small.

To test the marmalade for doneness, remove it from the heat and carefully transfer a small representative half-spoonful to one of your frozen spoons. It should look shiny, with tiny bubbles throughout. Replace the spoon in the freezer for 3 or 4 minutes, then remove and carefully feel the underside of the spoon. It should be neither warm nor cold; if still warm, return it to the freezer for a moment. Tilt the spoon vertically to see if it runs; if it does not run, and if its top layer has thickened to a jelly consistency, it is done. If it runs, cook it for another few minutes, stirring and test again as needed.

When the marmalade is finished cooking, turn off the heat but do not stir. Remove the tea-infuser. Using a stainless steel spoon, skin off any surface foam and discard. Pour the marmalade into the preheated, sterilized jars. Wipe the rims clean and screw the lids on just until they are snug and put the whole lot back into the 250˚ oven for 15 minutes to ensure they are sterilized, then set aside to cool.

Of French Copper & Blue Chairs

Santa Claus brought me a French copper preserving pot for Christmas this year. Confession or admission? I'm afraid I'm becoming a jam person - like a cat lady or a jazz fanatic. One should have a healthy distrust of such narrow obsessions and secret societies. But since I own a cat and listen to jazz I'm beginning to see a disturbing trend.

Jam making, while relatively simple, is fraught with subtle and nuanced potential disasters that are rarely, if ever, addressed or articulated in preserving cookbooks. They're pretty consistent in this regard. I'm not sure if it's a lack of thoroughness on the authors' parts or a smug presumption that you already know the arcane tricks of the trade–as if to say, "If you have to ask then you're obviously not one of us."

But fear not! I have found my guru and her name is Rachel Saunders. The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is my bible (my wife has started referring to her as my "jam girlfriend" as compared to my eldest daughter who is simply my "girlfriend" or my youngest daughter who is my "new girlfriend.")

Although I'm determined that this blog won't review books or restaurants, I'm going to make an exception in this case. For anyone interested in making preserves or who, like me, just likes collecting beautiful cookbooks–stop what you're doing right now and run as fast as you can to your local book purveyor and get a copy. Every aspect of jam-making is explained in clear, thorough and beautiful detail, from process and equipment to the stages of cooking and the dreaded "setting point." There are neat tricks for sterilizing, seasonal recipes and a whole back section that just talks about fruits. In fact the whole book has a quality I find irresistible in a cookbook–it's a great read. (Note: when you start taking cookbooks to bed for your evening reading you can rest assured you have a problem.)

I am now armed and dangerous and heading to the kitchen to make Orange Campari Marmalade.

A Winter's Garden

"Even in winter an untidy garden is an eyesore. Keep mulches of straw and leaves well held in place."

"Between now and the first of March prune your grapes."

-Richardson Wright


The snow falls and falls
The mountains and meadows sleep.
Only an old mill
Stays awake.

-Okakura Ichijitsu

Christmas Cookies

At some point in my early adulthood I decided there were several things that I needed to start gathering from my grandparents' generation before it was too late – in no particular order, the negatives of old family pictures, tea cups and Sicilian cookie recipes. The negatives turned out to be easy - both grandmothers and a couple of aunts had surprising stashes and were happy to let me take them. The tea cups I'll leave for another time. It's the cookies that interest us here.

For me, no childhood memory of family holidays is complete without homemade Sicilian cookies – sesame cookies (good for dunking in coffee), spiced chocolate balls, the strange and mysterious anise-flavored "bones of the dead," and the glorious and glorified Cuccidatti (think fig newton for grownups.) When I started making these cookies myself, it was usually during the Christmas holiday season when I had the time and the inclination. Over the years I have come to associate all of these Sicilian cookies with the holidays but in reality only the Cuccidatti are traditionally served during Christmas.

Nothing sums up the history of Sicily quite like a Cuccidatti. The mash-up of figs and raisins and chocolate and citrus represent all the occupiers, conquerors and rapists who have spent any appreciable time on the island – the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Spanish. They're all there, wrapped snugly in cookie dough and sweetly drizzled with icing.





Cuccidatti
modified and adapted from Gourmet magazine

These cookies can be quite heavy (and in Sicily quite sweet) so over the years I've tried to lighten them up a bit. I'll use white figs (Calimyrna) in equal proportion to black figs (Mission) or substitute dried apricots for some of the black figs. I've seen recipes that won't say to chill either the filling or the dough but I think both are a good idea - the filling should have time to come together and the butter-dough should chill and set. Make them in the evening and then let it all sit overnight in the fridge.

Filling
4 oz almonds - toasted
3 oz pine nuts - toasted
4 oz Calimyra figs (or dried apricots)
4 oz Mission figs
4 oz golden raisins
zest of half a lemon
zest of half an orange
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
2 oz dark chocolate
3/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brandy (or grappa)

Put everything in a food processor and pulse until it's broken up and more or less uniform but not whizzed into a paste - you should be able to make out bits of nuts and chocolate etc. Refrigerate overnight or at least 8 hours covered in plastic wrap.

Dough
4 cups flour
1 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter - cubed
2 large eggs
1/2 cup whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
zest of half a lemon
zest of half an orange

Put all the dry ingredients in a food processor and pulse to mix. Add the cubed butter and pulse again until the butter is roughly pea-sized. Empty into a large mixing bowl. Combine the liquid ingredients into the food processor and mix. Add the liquid mix to the dry ingredients and stir with a fork until everything starts to come together. Switch to your hands and quickly knead it all together. Cut in half and form each half into a thick, rough, rectangle shape. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight, or at least 8 hours.

Making the cookies
Preheat the oven to 350˚

Measure 1/3 cup of the filling at a time and roll into logs about an inch wide and 10 inches long. The filling is quite sticky and a little hard to work with, so a tiny bit of flour on your hands can help. I've taken to using plastic wrap and my sushi roller and just squeezing the 1/3 cup of filling to the width of the bamboo roller.

Working with one piece of dough at a time (leaving the other in the refrigerator) roll into a 15"x14" rectangle, an 1/8" thick. With a ruler or straight-edge trim to 13"x10", then cut into 4 (10"x 3 1/4") strips. Lay a log of filling in the middle of each strip and then bring up the dough on each side and pinch the seam together. Roll the log over, seam side down, and press gently, flattening it slightly. Cut the log into 1 1/2 - 2 inch cookies with a sharp, floured knife and then arrange on a large baking sheet lined with parchment or a Silpat mat.

Bake in the middle of the oven for 15-20 minutes, until lightly golden around the edges. Transfer to cooling racks for at least 10 minutes before icing.

Repeat with the remaining dough and filling.

Icing
1 cup confectioners sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 - 2 tablespoons lemon + orange juice (you didn't throw them away after zesting, did you?) sprinkles (more or less depending on the degree of your inner child)

Whisk together the sugar and vanilla with enough citrus juice to make a thick, pourable icing. Drip the icing onto the warm cookies and shake those sprinkles. Let cool and store in an airtight container. Alternatively you could pour yourself a mug of coffee and consume the entire batch standing at the counter.

Magic

It's been funny to watch the child learn how to use a camera phone. Taking pictures, for her, will be second nature - like eating or breathing. She's on her second decommissioned iPhone and has no problem turning it on and going to the camera app. I'll hear the click of the "mirror" and the whine of the "motor drive" and then she'll announce the subject of the picture: "Papa" or "Sadie's foot!" She's currently working on a couple of "series" – the ceiling fan in her room (whilst having her diaper changed) and an abstract, Rothko-esque series of black and orange (her finger over the lens.) I think to myself that if she sticks with it over the next 15 or 20 years she'll turn out to be a much more accomplished photographer than her father, who waited into his thirties before taking up a camera with any real seriousness.

But I also realize how different taking a picture is now compared to when I was teaching myself photography. There is an immediacy to taking snaps with a phone that is at once literal and at the same time virtual - looking at a tiny screen to frame the shot. It is akin to all the other screens we stare at every day of our lives (computers, televisions, DVD players) – life-like but not completely real. And disposable. The image itself (if you can actually call it that) is what? Is where? Bits of electronic information? A series of ones and zeroes? Even as a professional photographer, you simply trust that digital images are there... somewhere.

Shooting film was an altogether more precious affair. It wasn't just the care and precautions you took in handling such light sensitive material but the care and caution you took to make sure each frame was exposed properly – or at the very least, adequately. You had to know or be reasonably sure because there was no little picture on the back of the camera. And for anyone who processed and printed their own black and white film, taking a picture became an exercise in thinking in negative. "Expose for the shadows - develop for the highlights" was the mantra you lived by. Holding up a freshly developed roll of film to the light, you knew if you had succeeded or failed. Were the highlights so dense and black that you'd never be able to see any detail in them? Was there absolutely nothing in the shadow areas? Would making a decent print prove to be impossible? And every image was precious because of the time or effort or expense involved. But at the end of the day it was something you held in your hand or hung on the wall.

Perhaps I'll set up the darkroom some day and stand in the strange, warm orange light and watch my daughter's wonder as images appear from nothing in the developing tray, as if by magic.

Birthdays

Sorry about that. It's been a wild several weeks here. For starters we had our second child. I say "we" in the loosest sense of the word. As the father-to-be you try to act important and useful but of course you have no medical training and all the real work is going to be done by your wife. If I learned anything from the birth of my first daughter, it was to do my best to not pass out during labor – it drains resources and manpower better spent on the mother. But all went well and the newest member of the family is home and happy.

Of course it's been a steady stream of friends and family and in the midst of it all our first daughter had her second birthday which has meant a steady stream of gifts and presents that puts your average Christmas to shame. And I say "had" although it seems to still be going strong a good week after the actual day. My wife and I could easily have gotten her nothing and she wouldn't have missed it. But we're not part of the solution – we're definitely part of the problem.



The wife had had it in her head for some time that we were getting her a toy kitchen. We had been around and around about what to get and driven the length and breadth of greater Boston to look at the various options. The choices seem to fall into one of two categories: shoddy and cheap, or nice and expensive. And for me there's an added aesthetic dimension: garishly bright or pink versus stylish and natural. And all the while you're asking yourself (and your spouse), "how much do we really want to spend on a toy stove?"

As I'm loathe to bring more cheap Chinese crap into the house, we had decided upon an Ikea stove (the only discernible difference between cheap Chinese crap and cheap Swedish crap is that at least the cheap Swedish crap has style.) But I had begun to notice the stuff they have at day care – clean, natural, varnished, furniture-grade plywood. Sturdy, well-built and with a minimum of fussy (and breakable) parts. So I finally looked to see who the manufacturer was –Community Playthings.

Now I don't want to get to up on my political horse and ride all over the blogosphere, but this little company in upstate New York is what America and it's economy should look like. The quality maple they use is grown within a small radius of their woodshops – their woodshops, as in, made-in-America. Local, sustainable and friendly as hell. When we realized we had ordered a stove too big and called to get a different model, they cheerfully shipped the new one and return-shipped the first stove, all at no charge. Every time my wife got off the phone with the customer service woman she was warm and fuzzy for at least several hours.

So we paid more for the beautiful and well-built toy stove. I know that when my daughters are finished with it that someday my grandchildren (and perhaps their grandchildren) will get just as much enjoyment out of it as they did. I feel so good about it that I'm not the least bit resentful that they have a better stove than I do ... I think.